Reid Hoffman

Leaders, whether in the public or the private sphere, must understand the responsibilities that come with their role. They are the most visible standard-bearers of their organizations. Holding them accountable to this responsibility protects the promise of our organizations and our communities.

The same instincts that make us good students can make us lousy entrepreneurs.

The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.

Any effort to make the death penalty speedier and less costly - more 'efficient' - will inevitably make it less just.

I've long believed that if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've released too late.

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

What is an entrepreneur? Someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.

The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.

Before dreaming about the future or marking plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you - as entrepreneurs do.

You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.

When you’re doing work you care about, you are able to work harder and better.

Having a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.

Hard work isn't enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It's actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.

'Founder' is a state of mind, not a job description, and if done right, even CEOs who join after day 1 can become founders.

A startup, to a some degree, is a set of those challenges of, 'If you don't solve this, you're dead.'

Some people mistake grit for sheer persistence - charging up the same hill again and again. But that's not quite what I mean by the word 'grit.' You want to minimize friction and find the most effective, most efficient way forward. You might actually have more grit if you treat your energy as a precious commodity.

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.

Many employer-employee relationships are built on a lie that starts from the first interaction: neither party automatically conceives of the relationship as something that will last a lifetime, but both interact as if it is. This lie of omission bases the relationship on distrust.

Success...is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

Help the people in your network. And let them help you.